He again jabbed the air. "And then in 1949, Perdn issued a blanket amnesty for anyone who had entered the country under a false name. So it is unlikely there will be any immigration record of Josef Strasser even if he really is here. Maybe you can go down to Bariloche, the ski resort, and ask around. The Germans love Bariloche. It reminds them of their beloved Bavaria. But I would not hold out much hope. I am terribly sorry to disappoint you."
Anna Navarro was not gone from Miguel Antonio Peralta's office two minutes before the Interpol man picked up his telephone. "Mauricio," he said. "I've just had a most interesting visitor."
In a modern office building in Vienna, a bland-looking middle-aged man watched without interest as the plasterboard walls that had enclosed a carpeted "reception area" and "conference room" were dismantled and wheeled away toward a freight elevator by a team of construction workers. Next came a Formica conference table, a plain metal desk, and assorted office equipment including a dummy telephone system and a working computer.
The bespectacled man was an American who for the last decade or so had been engaged to perform a variety of services around the world, the significance of which was invariably obscure to him. He had never even met the company's chief, had no idea who he was. All he knew was that
the mysterious head of the firm was a business associate of this building's owner, whb'd been happy to lend use of the eleventh floor.
It was like watching a stage set being struck. "Hey," called out the bespectacled American, "someone's gotta take down the sign in the lobby. And leave that U.S. seal with me, will ya? We might need it again."
New York
Dr. Walter Reisinger, the former Secretary of State, took the call in the back of his limousine as it inched through morning rush-hour traffic on Manhattan's East Side.
Dr. Reisinger disliked the telephone, which was unfortunate, since these days he spent virtually every waking moment on the phone. His international consulting firm, Reisinger Associates, was keeping him even busier than his days at State.
Secretly he had been afraid that, after retiring from the government and writing his memoirs, he'd be gradually marginalized, treated as an eminence grise, invited to appear on Nightline once in a while, and to write the occasional thumb-sucker for the New York Times Op-Ed page.
Instead, he had become more famous, and certainly far richer. He found himself globe-hopping more now than during his shuttle diplomacy days in the Middle East.
He pressed the speaker button. "Yes?"
"Dr. Reisinger," said the voice on the other end of the phone, "this is Mr. Holland."
"Ah, good morning, Mr. Holland," Reisinger said jovially. The two men chatted for a minute or so, and then Reisinger said, "This shouldn't be a problem. I have good friends in just about every government in the world-but I think the most direct route would be to go right to Interpol. Do you know its Secretary-General? A most interesting man. Let me give him a call."
Patient Eighteen lay on a hospital bed with his eyes closed, an IV feeding tube in his left arm. He was shaking, as he had done constantly since the treatments began. He was also nauseated, and periodically retched
into a bedpan placed beside the bed. A nurse and a technician stood watching nearby.
A doctor, whose name was Lofquist, came into the examination room and went up to the nurse. "How is the fever?" he asked. They spoke in English, because his English was still better than his German, even after working here in the clinic for seven years.
"It hasn't broken," the nurse replied tensely.
"And the nausea?"
"He's been vomiting regularly."
Dr. Lofquist raised his voice to address Patient Eighteen. "How're you feeling?"
The patient moaned. "My god damned eyes hurt."
"Yes, that's normal," Dr. Lofquist said. "Your body is trying to fight it off. We see this all the time."
Patient Eighteen gagged, leaned over to the bedpan, and was sick. The nurse wiped his mouth and chin with a damp washcloth.
"The first week is always the most difficult," Dr. Lofquist said cheerily. "You're doing wonderfully well."
Chapter Thirty-Five
Our Lady of Mercy, Nuestra Senora de la Merced, was an Italian ate basilica perched on the swarming Cane Defensa, across from a disconcertingly contemporary branch office of the Banco de Galicia. The church's granite facade was crumbling, A wrought-iron fence enclosed a forecourt paved with worn and cracked black-and-white harlequin stone tiles, where a